As chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting System, Phil Kent oversees a portfolio of channels ranging from CNN to Cartoon Network to TNT. As TNT prepares to expand into the broadband arena next week, Kent spoke with The Hollywood Reporter editor Cynthia Littleton about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for TBS' crown jewels.

The Hollywood Reporter: Of the channels in the Turner Broadcasting portfolio, TNT has been on a roll of late with "The Closer" and other series. It used to be known primarily for big-event movies. Can you talk about the transition to original series programming and what that has meant to TNT?

Phil Kent: TNT is the largest single-earnings contributor to Turner Broadcasting. ... TNT has always been a collection of sports and entertainment. We've always had a lot of series programming, but it has been mostly acquired series. Original series give us a stronger identity of this drama brand with advertisers. It makes us more distinctive with viewers. It really shores up the brand positioning. The economics of an original series are far worse than the economics of an acquired series simply because of the cost and the risk of not knowing how well it's going to do. But it's just a very important part of the mix, and it will become an increasingly important part of the mix. And in terms of a strategy of where we're taking all of (the TBS) networks, we have laid out a whole company strategy of starting to transition from just being known as linear networks to branded media environments.

THR: You just announced plans to expand TNT into the broadband arena with the launch of Dramavision on Tuesday. What do you think that will do for TNT?

Kent: It creates new capacity for both viewership and revenue. We're limited by the number of primetime hours we can program. This gives us a whole new primetime that we can populate with long- and shortform programming that people want to see. As our capacity increases, it allows us to sell advertisers viewership from both the Web and the linear service.

THR: You're planning to put a wealth of contemporary and vintage TNT programs on Dramavision. How did you decide on the programming menu?

Kent: The lead program is "Into the West." We've literally received thousands of requests to air this show since ("West's") 16 Emmy nominations were announced. Finding 12 hours of primetime real estate was impossible, so by making it our launch vehicle for Dramavision, we are able to let viewers watch "Into the West" when and how they want. ... There will be a combination of original programming, extensions of original programming as well as library and acquired product.

THR: Do you have a number in mind in terms of the amount of original series you program on TNT and TBS?

Kent: There's not a strict number. We work within a large operating budget, and there's all kinds of trade-offs between how much we must spend on sports and how we much spend on original programming and acquisitions. If we make a great pilot, the chances are overwhelming that we'll greenlight it to series. We greenlit last year "The Closer" and "Wanted" because we felt great about two pilots. This year, we felt great about renewing "The Closer" based on its success the first season, and when we watched the pilot of "Saved" and the lights went up, and "We're doing this." It's so hard to get a great script and a great pilot that when you have it, I think you do whatever you can to figure out how to afford it. But it's not a set financial model that we'll do a certain number of original series.

THR: Let's talk about CNN. There's a perception that as a business it is a bottom-line problem area for Time Warner. Is that true?

Kent: No, it's not the case at all. CNN is, the last few years, probably the most consistent business we've had. It's been one of the fastest-growing parts of Turner. And unfortunately, what most of the media press write about is their one weakness that we probably look the worst on in competitive positioning, which is total household ratings. Whereas where we earn the bulk of our revenue is on advertising targeted to (viewers) 25-54. We've made substantial progress in closing the gap with our primary competitor (Fox News) and in just improving on ourselves. And not only that, CNN is the farthest ahead of all of the Turner businesses in terms of becoming a multiplatform business with its digital strategies. And aside from its financial performance and improving its competitive positioning, I think its reporting is terrific, particularly as evidenced the (world events of recent) weeks.

THR: Does the quality of the journalism translate to ratings and revenue?

Kent: It translates into the strength of the brand, and the brand is the single most important asset of CNN. And what people expect from CNN is what we're giving them, which is immediacy and accuracy and taking them to where the news is and showing them all the angles and doing it a number of different ways. As I like to say, we're delivering more news to more people in more ways and in more places than anyone else. ... I think the real strength of CNN -- and not only from our business mission to be successful for Turner and Time Warner but for our journalistic mission, too -- is that we do a terrific job at explaining all of the dimensions of a story like (the Israel-Hezbollah conflict) to the public. From having a strong reporter like John King sitting in Jerusalem for a number of weeks and really giving, you know, this story of what's going on with the diplomatic efforts. And having an experienced guy like John Roberts out in the field for weeks at a time, and obviously you know that our chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour -- we're bringing dimension to this that I don't think our competitors are.

THR: Are the online and multiplatform extensions of CNN significant business for you yet?

Kent: I believe they will be. We have one of the most successful Web sites with CNN.com, which averages about 25 million unique users a month. We have a new subscription broadband product called CNN Pipeline, which is still in its early days. I haven't seen anything as good as this, which has, at any given time, four streams of live video, including 12 hours a day of CNN International, plus a very, very dynamic video search function. ... We are experimenting with them in different ways. I don't know that the retail subscription for video news is going to be a huge business. I think most people believe they're entitled to get enormous amounts of news for free, and they can find enormous amounts of news for free. But we attach advertising to a podcast, and we sell that. We can put video advertising on the site. We intend to make money one way or the other with all of these.

THR: Does AOL play a big role in any of your multiplatform planning? Are there advantages for the Turner Broadcasting channels of being part of such a broader conglomerate as Time Warner or is synergy overrated, as some have recently suggested?

Kent: I believe that we have a collection of very strong and very pragmatic business leaders running these businesses. And I think that we are stronger together than we are apart. We have our expectations in check in terms of what these words "collaboration," "synergy" and "adjacencies" mean, but we are very mindful of them. And what it means is having a seat at the table and then developing a collective intuition on how all of these businesses work together. ... We call it the media value chain, from content creation to content aggregation to content distribution. We have a very powerful seat in every one of these chairs at this collective table, and there is an advantage to being able to sit around and have conversations with each other that is very hard to have with an external supplier or an external distributor. We can have conversations about where the business is going and what kind of products we should be thinking about with (Time Warner Cable's) Glenn Britt and Fred Dressler that are very different than we would have with any other distributor. The same thing with Warner Bros. We can sit down with (Warners') Barry Meyer and Bruce Rosenblum and talk about where we see the business going and what we're looking for with an informality and an openness that we simply could not do with other studios. Now it doesn't mean that we only buy and sell to each other because that would not be in either's best business interest. But there is in my mind no question an advantage to being together versus being apart.

THR: How important is the international marketplace in the grand scheme of TBS? CNN and Cartoon Network seem to have big footprints around the world.

Kent: It's nowhere near the scale of the domestic businesses we have, but it's growing and we're doing some pretty interesting things. Cartoon Network Korea is one of our latest launches....What we're doing more and more is just getting all of the executives to talk more with each other and to learn what's going on in all these regions. I have told the people working on the wireless business in the United States to get themselves over to Hong Kong every now and then and see some of the things that our folks over there are doing in markets like Korea....So even though the scale of the business isn't as large, it's an amazing learning laboratory and the growth rates are very high. I think the fact that I had a couple of years running (CNN International) has really helped. I've been back in the U.S. for half a decade, but I never really lost that globalist mindset.